Orion

Letting us know of all these deals is great, but just be careful not to give the impression that this great site suddenly became a advert host for companies that want to sell stuff

. . . unless they compensate you, since this site is popular and it's like free advertising for them, you know? No hidden meaning here. . . just what I wrote and nothing else.

btw, I am lucky because I can get lightroom or any other programs like C4D from my University at prices WAY below retail. I got PS CS5 for $200 (non upgrade) and I can get lightroom for $100 ANY time as student license fee.

Letting us know of all these deals is great, but just be careful not to give the impression that this great site suddenly became a advert host for companies that want to sell stuff

. . . unless they compensate you, since this site is popular and it's like free advertising for them, you know? No hidden meaning here. . . just what I wrote and nothing else.

btw, I am lucky because I can get lightroom or any other programs like C4D from my University at prices WAY below retail. I got PS CS5 for $200 (non upgrade) and I can get lightroom for $100 ANY time as student license fee.

I get a small percentage of sales from B&H, and no, I dont want to become a "deals site". LensRentals.com I do as a favour, because they've been great to me and pretty much everyone else they ever deal with. Gura Gear I feel the same way about.

Black Friday is thankfully 2 days of deals and I don't have to post much more than that. I usually limit it to reporting hard to get stuff that shows up in stock.

Also for those with Academic Licenses... not always as easy. Nice to enjoy it when you can, but once you are out, the upgrade path is not always clear. Adobe requires academic credentials to get a serial, and upgrades often are tied to a specific chain, i.e. a retail upgrade cannot be applied on an academic version. This has been getting much much tighter.

Most companies are really focused on this particular avenue, especially since students often will get the software, get the key and then sell it for a profit which is why the upgrade chains now have gotten tighter, i.e you can buy CS5 from a student, they can give you a key, but when it comes to upgrading to CS6, you will need a student upgrade, or will have to work through Adobe to get the upgrade to accept your student key as a qualified product for a retail upgrade.

My real job is working at a non-profit teaching hospital that is affiliated with Harvard. Even though I have a Harvard email address, most companies that used to sell us academic licensing in the past no longer do.

I have a academic version of Lightroom 2, my son is taking photography in college. There was no upgrade problem to LR 3 with the retail update. My Photoshop was originally a $50 deal from a employee friend in 1998. I've bought upgrades since then.

I just scored it from Amazon through one of their 3rd party vendors (Tiger Direct I think) for $99. The price only showed up in their search function and let you add to the shopping cart that way. If you click on the actual product it showed as $149 or so. In any case, I was able to check out at $99 with free shipping.